Lecture by Yuri Bezmenov

https://bezmenov.neocities.org/lecture/

Yuri Bezmenov

Yuri Bezmenov
Lecture by Yuri Bezmenov
Transcriber’s Notes

Ideological Subversion Lecture on YouTube

Transcript
Subversion is the term — if you look in a dictionary, or criminal codes to that matter — usually is explained as a part of activity to destroy things like the religion, government system, political economical system of a country. And usually it’s linked to espionage and such romantic things as blowing up bridges, side tracking trains, cloak and dagger activity in Hollywood style.

What I’m going to talk about now has absolutely nothing to do with the cliche of espionage or KGB activity of collecting information. So the greatest mistake or misconception, I think, is that whenever we are talking about KGB, for some strange reason — starting from Hollywood movie makers to professors of political science and quote unquote “experts,” some on Soviet affairs or “Kremlinologists” as they call themselves — they think that the most desirable thing for Andropov and the whole KGB is to steal blueprints of some supersonic jet, bring it back to the Soviet Union and sell it to the Soviet military industrial complex. It’s only partly true.

If we take the whole time, money, and manpower that the Soviet Union, and KGB in particular, spends outside of USSR border we will discover — of course, there are no official statistics, unlike with the CIA or FBI — that espionage as such occupies only 10–15% of money, time and manpower. Fifteen percent of the activity of the KGB. The rest, 85%, is always subversion. And unlike a dictionary of English, Oxford Dictionary, subversion in Soviet terminology means always a destructive, aggressive activity aimed to destroy the country, nation or geographical area of your enemy.

So there are no romantics in there, absolutely no blowing up bridges, no microfilms and Coca-Cola cans. Nothing of that sort. No James Bond nonsense. Most of this activity is overt, legitimate, and easily observable if you give yourself time and trouble to observe it. But according to the law and law enforcement systems of the Western civilization, it’s not a crime exactly because of misconception, manipulation of terms. We think that a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No. Subverter is a student who come for exchange, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself was ten years ago.

Now, subversion is an activity which is a two-way traffic. You cannot subvert an enemy which doesn’t want to be subverted. If you know history of Japan, for example, before the 20th century, Japan was a closed society. The moment a foreign boat comes to the shores of Japan, the Imperial Japanese army politely tell them to get lost. And if American salesman comes to the shore of Japan, I’d say 60 or 70 years from now back and says, “Oh, I have a very beautiful vacuum cleaner for you, you know, with good financing.” He says, “Please leave us. We don’t need a vacuum cleaner.” If they don’t leave, they shoot them. To preserve their culture, ideology, traditions, values — intact. You were not able to subvert Japan. You cannot subvert the Soviet Union because the borders are closed. The media is censored by the government. The population is controlled by the KGB and internal police. With all the beautiful glossy pictures of TIME magazine and Magazine America, which is published by the American embassy in Moscow, you can not subvert Soviet citizens because the magazine never reaches Soviet citizens. It’s collected from the newsstands and thrown in the garbage can.

Bezmenov explains that subversion is a two-way street
Fig. 1 – Subversion is a two-way street
Subversion can be only successful when the initiator, the actor or the the agent of subversion, has a responsive target. It’s a two-way traffic [Fig. 1]. The United States is a receptive target of subversion.

There is no response similar to that one from the United States to the Soviet Union. It stops halfway some way. It never reaches here. [Fig. 2]

Subversion flowchart
Fig. 2 – Flowchart
The theory of subversion goes all the way back 2,500 years ago. The first human being who formulated the tactics of subversion was a Chinese philosopher by the name of Sun Tzu. Twenty five hundred years B.C. He was an adviser for several imperial courts in ancient China, and he said, after long meditation, that to implement state policy in a warlike manner is the most counterproductive, barbaric and inefficient to fight on the battlefield. You know that war is continuation of state policy, right? So if you want successfully to implement your state policy and you start fighting, this is the most idiotic way to do it. The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy. And that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look to your enemy as an alternative, if not desirable than at least visible. “Better red than dead.” That’s the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired — if subversion is successful. This is basically what subversion is, as you see, not a single mention of blowing up bridges. Of course, Sun Tzu did not know about blowing up bridges. Maybe they were not that many bridges at that time.

But the basics of subversion is being taught to every student of KGB school in USSR and to officers of military academies. I’m not sure if the same author is included in the list of reading for American officers, to say nothing about ordinary students of political science. I had difficulty to find the translation of Sun Tzu in the library of a university in Toronto and, later on, here in Los Angeles. But it’s a book which is not available. It is forced to every student in USSR. Every student is who is taught to be dealing further in his future career with foreigners.

What subversion is, basically it consists of four periods timewise. We start from here and go this way — time, right, this is the beginning point. The first stage of subversion is the process, which is called basically demoralization. It says for itself what it is. It takes from, say, 15 to 20 years to demoralize a society. Why 15 or 20 years? This is the time sufficient to educate one generation of students or children, one generation, one lifetime span of a person, a human being which is dedicated to study, to shaping up. The outlook, ideology, personality — no more, no less. Usually it takes from 15 to 20 years. What it includes? It includes influencing or by various methods, infiltration, propaganda methods, direct contacts — it doesn’t really matter, I will describe them later — of various areas where public opinion is formulated or shaped [Fig. 3]. Religion, educational system, social life, administration, law enforcement system, military of course, and labor and employer relations, economy. Okay? Five areas. I will not write them down because we’ll not have enough space.

The subversion process
Fig. 3 – Flowchart
Some sometimes when I describe all the methods, students ask me a question, “Are you sure this is the result of Soviet influence?” Not necessarily. Is it the tactic of subversion about which I’m talking is similar to the martial art, the Japanese martial art. If some of you familiar with that tactic probably you will remember that if an enemy is bigger and heavier than yourself it would be very painful to resist his direct strike. If a heavier person wants to strike me in the face, it would be very naive and counterproductive to stop his blow. The Chinese and Japanese judo art tells us what to do. First, to avoid the strike. Then, to grab the fist and continue his movement in the direction where it was before, right, until the enemy crashes in the wall. So what happens here? The target country obviously does something wrong. If it’s a free, democratic society, there are many different movements within the society. Obviously, in every society there are people who are against the society. They may be simple criminals, ideologically in disagreement with the with the state policy, conscientious enemies, simply psychotic personalities who are against anything. Right? And finally, there is a small group of agents of a foreign nation. Bought, subverted, recruited, right? The moment all these movements will be directed in one direction. Right? This is the time to catch that movement and to continue it until the movement forces the whole society into collapse, into crisis [Fig. 4]. So that’s exactly the martial arts tactic. We don’t stop an enemy. We let him go. We help him to go in the direction we want them to go.

Bezmenov showing judo follow-through
Fig. 4
So on the stage of demoralization, obviously, there are tendencies in each society, in each country, which are going in the opposite direction from the basic moral values and principles. To take advantage of these movements, to capitalize on them, is the main purpose of the originator of subversion. So we have religion, we have education, we have social life, we have power structure, we have labor relations, unions, and finally we have law and order [Fig. 5]. One, two, three, four, five, six. OK. These are the areas of application of subversion. What it means exactly in the case of religion: destroy it, ridicule it, replace it with various sects, cults which bring people’s attention, faith whether it is naive, primitive, doesn’t really matter. As long as the basically accepted religious dogma is being slowly eroded and taken away from the supreme purpose of religion, to keep people in touch with the supreme being, that serves the purpose. Therefore, replace accepted and respected religious organizations with fake organizations. Distract people’s attention from the real faith and attract them through various different faiths.

Bezmenov and the sub-steps of demoralization
Fig. 5 – Demoralization
Education. Distract them from learning something which is constructive, pragmatic, efficient. Instead of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, chemistry, teach them history of urban warfare, natural foods, home economy, your sexuality, anything as long as it takes you away.

Social life. Replace traditionally established institutions and organizations with fake organizations. Take away the initiative from people. Take away responsibility from naturally established links between individuals, groups of individuals and society at large, and replace them with artificially, bureaucratically controlled bodies. Instead of social life and friendship between neighbors, establish social workers’ institutions, people on the payroll of whom? Society? No, bureaucracy. The main concern of social workers is not your family, not you, not social relations between groups of people. The main concern is to get the paycheck from the government. What will be the result of their social work? Doesn’t really matter. They can develop all kinds of concepts to show to the government and to the people that they are useful. OK. Away from the natural links.

Power structure. OK. The natural bodies of administration, which are traditionally either elected by people at large or appointed by elected leaders of society, are being actively substituted by artificial bodies. The bodies of people, groups of people who nobody elected, never — as a matter of fact, most of the people don’t like them at all — and yet they exist. One such group is media. Who elected them? How come they have so much power? Almost monopolistic power on your mind. They can rape your mind. But who elected them? How come they have the nerve to decide what is good and what is bad for the elected — by you — president and his administration. Who the hell are they? Spiro Agnew, who is hated by the liberal left, called them a bunch of enfeebled snobs. And that’s exactly what they are. They think they know. They don’t. The level of mediocracy in a big establishment like New York Times, Los Angeles Times, major television network, you don’t have to be an excellent journalist. You have to be exactly a mediocre journalist. That’s easier to survive. There’s no competition anymore. You have you good nice income. One hundred thousand dollars a year. That’s it. Whether you are better or worse doesn’t really matter anymore. As [long] as you are smiling for the camera and do your job. That’s it. No more competition.

Power structure. Slowly it is eroded by the bodies and groups of people who do not have either qualifications nor the will of the people to keep them in power, and yet they do have power. Together with that, there is another process.

Law enforcement. Law and order organization and structure is being eroded. For the last 20, 25 years, if you see old movies and new movies, you can see that in new movies a policeman, an officer of the United States Army looks dumb, angry, psychotic, paranoid. A criminal looks nice, kind of. Well, he smokes hash and shoots the whatever drug. But basically, he’s a nice human being. He’s creative and he’s unproductive only because society oppresses him, [whereas] a general of Pentagon is always by definition dumb, a war maniac. A policeman is a pig, rude policeman. He abuses his power. A generalization like that. The hatred, the mistrust to the people who are supposed to protect you and enforce law and order. Moral relativity. The Angelo Buono process lasted two years in Los Angeles and yet there are still some lawyers who say, “Look, he’s a nice character.” As a matter of fact, there was some witness, also a criminal, who said, “Well, he’s a nice guy. I asked him one day to burn a house of my enemy and he wouldn’t do it. Nice fellow.” A slow substitution of basic moral principles whereby a criminal is not a criminal, actually. He’s a defendant even if his guilt is proven. There is still a doubt. To kill or not to kill, to be or not to be. Thou shall not kill, yes. But this line may not necessarily be applicable to a murder. Thou shall not murder. That should be the presumption, not that thou shall not kill. OK.

Labor relations. At this stage, within 15–20 years, we destroy the traditionally established links of bargaining between employer and employee. The classical Marxist–Leninist theory of natural exchange of goods. Person A has five sacks of grain and Person B has five pairs of shoes. The natural exchange without money is when they bargain between each other. And only with the introduction of the third Person C, an entirely third, foreign stranger who says, “No, don’t give him five sacks of grain, give it to me. And you give me or five pairs of shoes and I will distribute it accordingly so that the economy will go.” [Fig. 6]

Natural exchange
Fig. 6 – Natural exchange
This is the death of natural exchange,